Morning Links: Spook-a-Rama Edition

The Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, home too to the creepy/crawly Spook-a-Rama.

DANG APRICOT/COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Travels

Francine Prose goes to Coney Island in search of the Spook-a-Rama, the subject of a creepy/crawly photo by Diane Arbus. [The New York Times]

A writer goes to Taos, New Mexico, and meditates on Agnes Martin. Out in the West, she writes, “it was so dark, you could see the stars between the stars, and even the darkness had a richness, and I never wanted to let my eyes adjust back to electric light, back to the world where everything had a shape, and a form, and a name.” [The Paris Review]

Critiques

Architecture critic Martin Filler goes deep on the Frank Lloyd Wright show now on view at MoMA. He digs the exhibition but not the catalogue—“so spottily edited and annoyingly designed that one yearns for the firm hand of MoMA’s longtime editorial director, Harriet Bee, now retired.” [The New York Review of Books]

Anne Ellegood, the curator of “Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World” for the Hammer Museum in L.A., takes on some of the criticism leveled over questions of identity and intention upon the show’s opening at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. [Artnet News]

Idiosyncratic Shows

Here’s a delightful story about an 18-year-old’s Sri Lankan museum in the basement of a feted Sri Lankan restaurant in Staten Island. [The New Yorker]

For one night at SleepCenter in Chinatown, a group of artists tried to reconcile their love of the reality TV show The Bachelor. Among the offerings: “A ‘Bachelor Nation’ flag hanging above the proceedings places the show’s fixations on true love and TV stardom in sharp relief—it’s emblazoned with a diamond ring and inscribed with reality TV contract legalese.” [The New York Times]

Resurrection

A large statue thought to date back to the 12th or 13th century was dug up from the ground around the Angkor temple complex in Cambodia. [ArtDaily]

Reports about the death of Great Jones Cafe, the beloved restaurant and longtime boho hang in downtown New York, were greatly exaggerated. [Gothamist]

Misc.

In its latest round of funding, the National Endowment for the Humanities gave $39 million in grants to around 245 projects, including a show of commercial art made by Georgia O’Keeffe for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. [The Art Newspaper]

Check out some pictures of ‘80s-era graffiti on the New York City subway, from the new book From the Platform 2. [The Guardian]

“How Could We Not Feature an Art Exhibit Filled With Robots and Monsters?” See some work in the Kaiju/Mecha Art Show in San Francisco. [io9]